And there wasn’t any warfare going on. People who had been used to living with a conflict and an enemy now found themselves with nothing of the sort. Maybe those who had actually fought were perfectly comfortable without having an enemy, but those who hadn’t—particularly all those youngsters—might be looking for a focus for all that energy.

So maybe that was why Hurlee had suddenly become an obsession. And probably, as Myste expected, within a couple of months it would turn into a sport like any other. At least, now that the rules had been agreed on, and things had sorted out into a round-robin of regular teams with exact rosters, the situation wasn’t quite so out-of-hand. Certainly the whole scheme of forbidding participation if marks fell off was working—miraculously, even with the highborn Blues, and heretofore, if their parents weren’t concerned with marks, there had been no way to effectively discipline them.

Maybe Hurlee wasn’t so bad after all.

“So where exactly is it that we’re going?” she asked.

“The Three Sheaves Inn,” he told her. She nodded, though she looked surprised. He had explained his situation with regard to young Devlin and his contact Norris, and the difficulty he found himself in trying to get close enough to make some sort of judgment about it. “I thought, at the least, into the play-going crowd we can insert ourselves. Good for me, for open my mouth I cannot, without myself betraying, so you can do the speaking for us both. Good for you, it would be, and it may be that an opportunity you will see that I cannot.”

“Fair enough,” she agreed, and glanced out the window into the thickening gloom of twilight. “And I might. You never know. Besides, I wouldn’t mind seeing this actor fellow; if he’s setting young hearts afire.”

Alberich snorted. “Not just young,” he corrected, and finished the last of his meal.

“All the better, then.” She chuckled at the expression on his face, and pushed off from the table without another word.

“Now, something did occur to me,” she said, as they moved out into the cold, snowy streets, passing a lamplighter who was climbing up to light one of his charges. “Had you considered paying one of those lowlife pickpockets you hang about with to snatch young Devlin’s purse when you think he’s carrying what you’re looking for? Tell him you want the papers, he gets anything else.”

Since it had not occurred to him, he almost stopped dead in the street to stare at her. “Ah. No,” he managed at last.